


on our wings, on our knees

by redbelles



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence - War of The Five Kings, F/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 14:22:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18852838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbelles/pseuds/redbelles
Summary: It’s not the first time he’s seen her take to battle on dragonback.[Prompt: Daenerys x Robb: Anger Born of Worry + I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On]





	on our wings, on our knees

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reygrets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reygrets/gifts).



It’s not the first time he’s seen her take to battle on dragonback; Daenerys is as fierce as the beasts she calls children, as hungry, as unafraid of the sky.

She wants revenge on the Lannisters as much as Robb does, perhaps even more so. Robb is the King in the North, the sword and crown of a kingdom, but when the slaughter is finished he can turn to the comfort of family. His mother. His sisters, when the battle is finally won. Even Jon, give a bribe or two and a swift-winged raven to carry the message. Dany has only herself. She is the last of her house, alone but for her children, and their fire does not warm. Instead, it merely burns.

Her heart burns to match: slender shoulders unbowed beneath the weight of a dynasty, head held high, crownless but ready to take what is hers with fire, and fire, and fire. 

Robb’s heard stories of the Iron Throne all his life: kings who squabbled over it, queens who died for it, Targaryens aplenty who bled for it, pricked and shamed by the very seat of their power. The Targaryens came to Westeros with fire, but they lived in blood. The whispers say Daenerys is different. They say she is Aegon come again, all fire, no blood. _Invincible_ , they say, _a conqueror as vicious and vengeful as the words of her slain house_.

Rumors. The same hushed talk that swears he rides into battle on the back of a monstrous wolf, that calls him skin-changer and wolf-walker, a northern demon who changes with the moon and rends his enemies with the sharpness of his own teeth. 

Whispers, nothing more. They would be easy enough to dismiss if he had not shared Grey Wind’s skin, hadn’t thrown his voice to the sky and heard a pack not his own howl back. He knows better to believe that Dany can’t be wounded, yet still, there’s a tiny sliver of his mind that wonders if perhaps those rumors have a kernel of truth to them. Direwolves and dragons and magic they both seem to bring are all too real; he can’t dismiss them entirely. 

After all, he’s never seen her bleed. She’s been on Westerosi soil for nearly a year now, fought in countless battles, struggled with her dragons as they chafe under her control, tumbled headlong into his bed and devoured him whole, and not once has she come away bloodied or even bruised. 

Not until now. 

He’s knee-deep in winter mud, armor spattered with gore and his sword-arm aching when he hears it: a keening howl, a scream no human throat could ever hope to conjure. His eyes find Grey Wind before he even thinks to look. The direwolf is bloodied but unharmed, frozen into stillness in the midst of battle. That yellow gaze is full of a cold, agonized fury, a rage that Robb realizes a moment later is coming from his own heart, unfurling like dark wings through his chest. It drives his eyes to the sky as the scream comes again. 

A black shape is plummeting from the crowds, trailing blood and fire. It eclipses the whole of his vision, black and red and fire, no silver in sight—

The dragon tumbles as it falls, a huge sort of spear lodged in the meat of its shoulder near the join of its wing. The great dark bulk twists once, twice, still falling, and Robb feels his heart drop out from the cage of his ribs. 

_Fly, gods damn you. You’re a dragon. Fly!_

Drogon screams a third time, frantic and furious, wings beating madly as he tries to right himself. A final wrench of his neck brings him level, and for a moment, Robb’s breath comes rushing back, relief cutting through the terror. But then the scream keeps going, rage turned to fear, and he sees the second figure drop away, small and silver and falling. 

He’s moving before the sight truly registers, shoving men out of his way, racing through the mud, heedless of the weight his armor, every fiber of his being straining toward the woman he’s never allowed himself to love. Grey Wind sprints ahead, swift as his name, driven on by Robb’s terror. 

Low in the sky now, Drogon hurtles into a dive, blood trailing freely from his wound. If it hampered him before it’s forgotten for the moment, lost in the wrenching fear of a child reaching for its mother, desperate and determined. The dragon catches her just before the ground rushes up to meet them. They land with a thunderous crash, a tangle of limbs and blood, and Robb loses sight of her. 

He’s cutting through a wave of Tyrell soldiers—galvanized by fear and Lannister gold—as they come to a stop, Drogon a mountain of unmoving flesh, claws still curled delicately around Dany’s body. She’s deathly still. 

The world turns to a white roar around him, like the keen of wolfsong turned to a chorus of unending grief. 

The rose bannermen scattered during their landing, diving for cover from the fire sure to follow, but the dragon has yet to move. Through the haze of battle, Robb can see the bravest among them begin to creep forward, eyes focused on Daenerys. _Kill the Dragon Queen_ , he can practically hear the men thinking, _and her dragons are no longer a threat. Kill the Dragon Queen and the Young Wolf will soon follow._

He can’t win this war alone, not now. Not with the Tyrells standing firm with the Lannisters, not with Dorne’s refusal to ally with the North for the crime of his long-dead aunt’s existence. Not with his father dead and his sisters still captive in King’s Landing and Theon gone silent, hiding away somewhere in the Iron Islands after a failed coup. He can’t win alone, but none of that matters to him, not when Dany’s lying still as death in the blood and shit of a battlefield, alone and surrounded by her enemies. 

He’s still so far away. 

One of the Tyrell men draws a dagger; a small blade, more precise than a sword. Easier to slip between a young woman’s ribs, long enough still to reach the heart. 

He’s fifty strides from her, thirty, ten—

—the blast of Drogon’s fire sears through the air, charring the Tyrell men to ash. It’s more intense than he’s ever seen it, a blistering black flame that turns bone to powder in the space of a breath. Fifteen feet away, and his face feels hot and spots dance across his vision, as though he’s stood too long staring at the summer sun. He spares no thought for it, just keeps running until he’s sliding to a stop in the mud before the dragon, lying wounded but still shielding his mistress. A warning hiss snakes through the air as Robb approaches, but he pays it no heed. 

“Dany,” he says, voice cracking on her name, and Drogon lets him pass, heaving himself up to a low crouch. Grey Wind paces circles in front of the beast, hackles up, snarling at the few soldiers left alive. 

There’s a bruise blooming dark and ugly across one side of her face. Blood trickles sluggishly from three massive scrapes along her side, a match for Drogon’s claws. Her eyes are closed, and he can’t tell if she’s breathing. 

His hands shake as he strips off his gloves, cradles her face as gently as he knows how. Air stirs faintly against his skin as a cups a hand just over her mouth, desperate for some sign of life. It hits him like a blow, that gentle stirring, and he has to fight back the impulse to haul her into his arms. He can’t see anything beyond the bruising and the scrapes, but she still hasn’t _moved—_

War has taught him more about the body’s terrible fragility than he ever wanted to know. Bruises that hint at internal damage, pools of blood gathering in the body and draining the life from men with no other outward signs of damage. Minor wounds that fester and sour and blacken the skin until the rot sets in and the maesters must turn to their bone saws. Men who fall and live but never move again, who die in paralyzed agony as battle rages on around them. 

A catalogue of battlefield horror crashes through his mind, a litany of death and dying, and he can’t help it. He reaches for her hand, squeezes it as tightly as he dares, desperate to hold some part of her close. How could he ever have forgotten how small she is? How delicate and easily broken? 

“Dany,” he says again, the word a plea now, a prayer to any gods listening. “Dany, Dany, love, please, you must wake up—”

A quiet moan escapes her lips, and then her eyes flutter open. His grip on her hand is tight enough to break bone, but he can’t make himself let go. 

“Robb?”

“Don’t move,” he tells her, worry still surging through him. She ignores him, as she always does, sitting up at once, reaching for him before she notices his hand wrapped white-knuckled around hers. 

“Oh.” She stares at their hands as though the sight is some revelation, another prophecy to stalk her dreams. 

“Dany, please, don’t move. You fell from—”

“I know,” she says, still in that same faintly shocked tone. “Drogon caught me.”

“And you crashed to the ground like a heap of stone,” he argues, because they always argue, all the worry in the world won’t stop that, “and you’re bleeding.”

“You were across the field,” she says, taking in their location as best she can from behind the dubious shelter of Robb’s body and the looming shadow of her dragon. “On the other side of that rise.”

“I— yes— Dany, I swear to the old gods and the new, if you don’t stop moving I will turn you over and thrash you myself—”

“You charged across a battlefield for me.” Her eyes are very wide, filled with hesitance he’s never seen before. For a moment, staring into those eyes, the world falls away. 

“Yes,” he says stupidly, flayed apart by the fear in her gaze. She’s worn many faces in front of him—last of the Targaryens, Mother of Dragons, the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, lover and warrior and woman unafraid—but never this one. She looks lost, and unbearably young. “Of course I did.”

“Of course,” she whispers to herself, lost, young, and he can’t stand that look any longer. He hauls her into his arms, rougher than he means to be, but careful nonetheless. He buries his face in her hair, breathes in the smell of blood and dragonfire, and beneath that, the familiar scent of her skin. 

“Of course,” he repeats, words muffled in the mess of her hair. “I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

It’s pathetic as confessions go, real and raw but so much less than she deserves. He pulls back, opens his mouth to try again, but she cuts him off, presses her lips to his in a fervent kiss, hands coming up to scrabble at his armor. 

He falls into it for a long moment, shocked, still so horribly relieved to have her alive and breathing in his arms. The clash of steel and Drogon’s answering roar jolt him to his senses. They’re in the middle of a battlefield, though their immediate surroundings are empty save for ash and melted steel. 

Dany doesn’t seem to care, clever fingers still trying to work him free of his armor, pressing kisses to his cheeks, the hinge of his jaw, every inch of skin she can reach. 

He catches her hand once more, presses it to the spot above his heart, covering it with his own. “We can’t,” he says, hoarse for an entirely different reason now. “Not here.”

“Yes, here,” she flings at him. “You came for me,” she says. “You care.” Shadows linger in her eyes, but the lost look is gone from her face. Instead, her expression is one of fierce, disbelieving joy.

He has to kiss again. He must.

A brief thing, because Drogon is still crouched above them, the battle still raging even as the enemy host begins to retreat, but as wild and sure as he can make it. 

“You blood, stubborn fool—”

“—queen—”

“—I love you. I’ve loved you for months now. You’re in my bed and my heart and every corner of my life, Daenerys. Of course I care. Of course I came.” He swallows, struck by the sheer dumb luck of her survival. “I should have told you sooner. I should have told you every day from the moment I first realized.”

“I forgive you, ser,” she says, falling back on a familiar jest, one she’s made since the earliest days of their alliance, back when she refused to recognize him as King in the North.

“I’m glad of it, Dany.” He’s too raw to respond in kind, too godsdamned grateful that she’s alive. he holds her close again for a long moment, safe beneath the mantled shadow of Drogon’s wings, then helps her to her feet. 

He reaches for his sword and steps back into the chaos of the battle, bellowing for his commanders. Grey Wind appears at his side, ash and blood streaking his fur, and howls, fierce as joyous as Dany’s smile. He looks back at her for the space of a breath. She’s framed by the towering silhouette of her dragon, standing firmly on her own two feet, a smile still playing across her lips. 

_Later_ , she mouths at him. 

He nods at her, solemn as a vow. 

His men are looking to him, waiting for orders about prisoners, how they’re to hold this newly-seized chunk of the Crownlands, waiting to tell him who’s fallen in battle and won’t be reporting to him in the command tent tonight. Each responsibility is another burden added to the weight of his kingship, but for once he doesn’t care.

The woman he loves is alive, and he’s stopped holding back. Stopped pretending. Tonight—later—he’ll prove to her just how dearly he meant that battlefield confession. 

“Later,” he calls to her, and watches the word light a spark of joy that burns and blooms through her whole body.

_Later, my love._

**Author's Note:**

> am i cleaning up and posting a bunch of previously written got fic out of spite? you bet i am!
> 
> [rebloggable](https://redbelles.tumblr.com/post/180569185343/daenerys-x-robb-anger-born-of-worry-i-didnt) on tumblr; feel free to come scream/cry with me about this absolute disaster of a show


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